


Double Take

by foxglove_heart



Category: Trying Again (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Megkenzie, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2147949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxglove_heart/pseuds/foxglove_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>n.</i> an act of quickly looking at something that is surprising or unusual a second time after looking at it a moment earlier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was confusing and devastating. The latter rather than the former, to be sure; Meg supposed she shouldn’t be driving in this state. But she had felt all right until now, really. Her mouth was a bit dry – her heartbeat too loud - the light of the streetlamps seemed a little harsher than usual - but otherwise, nothing was wrong.

The car slowed down, the metal of the bumper grazing against something. One of the headlights crunched like a dry waffle. Meg sat very still; she could make out a flowerbed full of dead begonias, all colourless and broken.

“Meg,” a worried voice was saying in her ear, “Meg, Jesus, are you all right? Say something!”

“I think I am,” said she. “But I just drove my car into your lamppost.”

The voice said something short and panicked, and the next moment she knew, it was poor Iain running to her across the front lawn and leaning into the window with his _let me examine you_ and _I’m a doctor_.

“I really am all right,” she said. “The lamppost isn’t. You aren’t a lamppost doctor, are you, Iain?”

“This doesn’t even make any sense. What on earth is a lamppost doctor? Here, here, come on. Meg?”

Somehow she had got out of the car and was standing in front of him. Immediately she felt how chilly the night air was; she shivered even in her turtleneck sweater.

“I’m not drunk,” she told him, and her lips quivered.

“Of course you aren’t,” he said. Even his fringe, it seemed, wobbled with the emotion. “What happened? Do you… need anything?”

“Some chili pepper would do,” Meg sniffed. “You have any?”

Iain nodded at the house, and they started walking across the lawn. She stumbled a little in the darkness, and after a bit of awkward fumbling he took her elbow; it was nice – not in the maybe-he-isn’t-all-that-into-Kate way: just nice.

Oh. Kate.

There are events there's never a good time to discuss. And then there are those that are so heartbreakingly ridiculous that you forget you have to discuss them. Much like you forget dreams; your brain just sort of refuses to accept that such a load of baloney is even possible.

As if on cue, Iain opened the front door and made a small joking gesture of welcome, smiling at her hesitantly.

She crossed the doorstep and entered the drawing room. It was a weirdly familiar place – hers and yet not hers; normally it’d have made her uncomfortable, but now it was a good kind of familiarity, the familiarity of a childhood house you’ve long left. It calmed her a little.

“So you know how there are these really dumb and convoluted situations in Mexican soap operas,” she said in a decidedly non-trembling voice.

“No, let me get you that chili pepper first,” said Iain, closing the door behind him. “What d’you need it for, anyway?”

Meg didn’t turn to him, but she heard how he opened the cupboard and started, from the sound of it, fairly ransacking his own kitchenware.

“My nose gets awfully blocked when I cry,” she explained apologetically. “It’s silly, really, but eating pepper seems to help. I don’t know, maybe I’m allergic to tears.”

“Aren’t we all.”

“Aren’t we all what?”

“Allergic to tears.”

Iain finished eviscerating his cupboard and gently touched her shoulder.

“Never mind,” he said when she turned to him, “I was attempting to be philosophical.”

“Ah. _Ah_. Well, quite.”

The peppers were small and a little dry, but she chewed on them anyway, growing a tad redder from their sheer spiciness. Iain, meanwhile, poured himself some wine; then looked at her inquiringly, tilting the bottle a little.

“No, thanks,” said Meg. “I’d rather have water.”

“Here you go,” he said, and handed her a glass. “What was that about Mexican soap operas?”

 _There it goes_ , she thought, _just tell him_ , but she still had to take a deep breath before she could continue. Iain was staring at her with concern.

“I came home and saw Matt.” Her hand with the glass shook. “I saw Matt kissing with a-“

Partially because she suddenly felt so terribly, terribly hurt and partially because there was nothing but worry for her in Iain’s expression, she had to stop and set the glass down. It clinked so loudly against the table that for a moment she was afraid she’d broken it.

“It’s stupid, really,” she said at last, and began to tremble. “Ridiculous- I’ve never thought these things actually happened-“

“Meg,” he said, very softly. She stretched her arms towards him and, when he responded by taking her by the shoulders, leant against him helplessly.

“You know how in Santa Barbara,” she sobbed, “it is perfectly normal for a guy to marry his grandmother only to discover that her cat is his sister-in-law? Or something along- along these lines. So it was so stupid when I saw Matt kiss with K- with a-“

“You saw Matt kiss with a cat?” said Iain, whose emotional state at this point could be described as a mixture of deep anxiety and mild confusion.

“No!” she squeezed him in a desperate hug and buried her face in his chest. “Iain – it was Kate. Oh, God, it was Kate, it was Kate with Matt. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

It might’ve been for the best that she couldn’t see his face, but she felt him stiffen against her, squeeze her shoulders convulsively, and it was almost as bad.

His silence frightened her.

"Hey," she called softly.

“You are joking,” he said in an anguished, high-pitched voice.

“Do I sound like I am?”

He stepped back without letting go of her, and they stumbled awkwardly into the drawing room. After a moment of agonised silence Meg freed herself and collapsed on the couch; but Iain sat beside her almost immediately, gripping her right wrist with both hands.

“It _is_ ridiculous. I’m- I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to react.”

Now his voice was quivering almost as badly as hers, and she thought, _we really are quite the pair_.

“I understand,” she said quietly, and covered her eyes with her free hand. The house was empty and silent; it was only the kitchen and the corridor that were lit – apparently Iain had been about to go to sleep. She felt that she really didn’t have any energy to ring Matt and have The Talk. Whatever that meant.

“Kate,” repeated Iain numbly.

“Kate,” said Meg in a small voice.

 “Why?” he asked, not from Meg so much as from the universe itself. “Why would she? Why did Matt do it, for that matter?”

“S’pose he was jealous,” she said flatly. “He rang me a couple of times when you and I were in Edinburgh - imagined I had gone with you because there was something going on between us.”

“Funerals and _shagging_ don't go together."

"Unless you're the Addams couple," agreed Meg. "I know, Iain. I know. But Matt doesn't think of it in these terms."

He hesitated.

“Do you think that Kate – that she, too?..”

“Maybe,” said Meg, and closed her eyes tight. For a while they were silent.

“It’s as if someone arranged it on purpose. That my mother would die and then my fiancée would- with your boyfriend; Jesus, it’s like a black comedy from the 1920s. I suppose now I’ll have to fall face flat into a pie, just for the comedic effect to be complete.”

“Well, falling face flat into a pie is the pleasantest of the three,” attempted Meg, but he only put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. There was something hitchy in his movements, much as if he were afraid to drop something fragile.

“What a dumb situation,” whispered he, and choked.

“Dumb,” repeated she. She no longer had it in her to cry; she just felt very empty and very tired, and it was as if nothing in the world mattered anymore.

There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel outside.

“’s Matt,” whispered Meg.

“Do you want to..?”

“No. Not now. He probably thinks I’ve gone to cheat on him with you.”

“Who on earth would even do _that-_ oh, right.”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

The steps were closer; then they stopped for a moment, and then sounded again, faster. Then they grew faint – it was as if someone was running away from the house.

“But he’ll tell Kate. Iain?”

Iain shifted and let out a little sound.

“She doesn’t believe me, anyway,” he said at last. “It can’t be made worse.”

“No. I suppose it can’t.”

They collapsed against each other. Meg thought that she really must get up and switch the lights off, if only for the sake of caring for the environment; and that Iain would have to go to his own bed and leave the couch to her, because while sleeping in each other’s arms would be nice, it would also cause them lots of cramps in the morning.

“I don’t even care,” she whispered miserably. “If there are more convoluted misunderstandings about to pile up, let them do so in my absence.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You do realize that if we continue in this vein, we’ll have to sleep with the entire neighbourhood,” she was saying. Iain raised an eyebrow at that; he had a hard time imagining what turn this conversation had had to take for this remark to be even remotely relevant. “I cheat on you; you cheat on me out of jealousy; _I_ cheat on you out of jealousy, and so forth. It’s just a matter of who runs out of people to frick frack first.”

There was a pause; he heard Meg’s breath quicken.

“No! Of course I did not! God, Matt, did you just take this seriously?” she let out something between a sob and a laugh. “I did not cheat on you with anyone! I love you, you dumb thing! And Iain’s my friend- oh, Jesus.”

Her hand with the phone fell in her lap. Iain could hear the beeping on the other end of the line.

“I made us some pancakes,” he said diplomatically. This seemed to startle her; she gave him a quick anxious glance. He was sitting on the armrest of the couch, a tad higher than her, so she had to throw her head back to look him in the eye.

“Oh, you didn’t have to-“ she began, and made a small helpless gesture.

“Well, but I _did_ do it,” Iain said to that. “So we may as well eat them.”

“Fair enough,” sighed she. “Thanks.”

Her nose and eyes were still pink from crying, but she seemed more composed today than she had been the day before. And the way she walked, when she followed him to the kitchen, was a little steadier.

Iain had tried, of course, to insist that she take his bed the previous night, but Meg turned out to be even more stubborn than he’d remembered; she had stayed on the couch, wrapped in a light woollen blanket. That was the way he’d found her in the morning, curled up in a little ball, her rich hair a mess.

“You heard anything from Kate?” asked Meg, staring at the snow white plates Iain was setting down on the table. The blanket was still draped around her shoulders.

“She left me a letter,” he answered, evenly. “Apparently she’s going down to Lancashire, to stay with her… aunt, I think. She wrote that she considers it dishonest to insist on marrying me when I’m clearly… clearly-“ his voice broke, and he dropped a steaming pancake on his own plate with a positively funereal look.

Meg touched his shoulder; he gave a shaky sigh.

“-clearly not over _you_ ,” he finished.

“What nonsense,” she said at once – but there was something guilty in her expression. “It must be because Matt told her I had gone to you. Sorry about that.”

“No, that’s all right,” said Iain, and blinked hard. “It wouldn’t have worked out regardless. Not after yesterday.”

The amount of maple syrup Meg poured on her pancakes would’ve been enough to drown someone. But she seemed content with that – or else she didn’t really notice what she was eating.

“I didn’t improve my situation, either,” she said, chewing. “Whatever came over me to ramble about – what was it? ‘We’ll have to sleep with the entire neighbourhood’? Me and my sense of humour.”

“It’s good.”

“What is?”

“Your sense of humour.”

“Well,” she looked at him with her round green-grey eyes, “…you think so?”

Iain nodded emphatically.

“It was a funny idea, though,” shrugged Meg, and offered him a weak smile. “We _could_ start a competition. With bonuses and special prizes and all that.”

“Bonuses?” he swallowed the last bit of pancake and set his fork down. “Like what?”

Meg stuck her upper lip out in mock thoughtfulness.

“Say, your points double if you bang two redheads in a row. And you get a bonus point if one of them is a foreigner.”

“Sounds like Tetris.”

She very nearly snorted her tea out through her nose.

“No,” she said, “if it were like Tetris, they’d start disappearing when you collected a certain number.”

“Closer to Scrabble, then,” said Iain sadly.

 

They finished their breakfast in silence. Driving to work in separate cars seemed silly and a waste of fuel; and also, perhaps, neither of them wanted to leave the other alone; so it came about that they took Iain’s car and Meg contented herself with the passenger seat.

He glanced at her as they drove, remembering that evening when she had dozed off on the way from Edinburgh. It had been only a day ago, but that day was like a century to him. Everything was changed – everything but Meg: the wonderful, kind Meg with her dimples and her sunny hair. And he found himself wishing sorely he could see again that peaceful expression with which she’d slept beside him.

They pulled up in the hospital’s parking lot.

“Well,” said he, patting her shoulder awkwardly. “You know.”

Meg smiled a little.

“Yeah. I know.”

She noticed him lingering and glancing at her as they made their way to the main entrance; then they were inside, and when she turned, he was no longer there.

 

“Why, hello,” said Martin upon seeing her enter the hall, “what happened?”

As always, he was chewing something that was not, as Meg knew from experience, necessarily a chewing gum, and as always, he was smiling at her in a strangely suggestive way. One needed to know Martin to realize that the way he smiled at others _always_ seemed suggestive, although of what and why was unclear.

She sighed inwardly. Right. Martin. Of course he, of all people, saw that something was wrong.

“Hi, Martin,” she said despondently, walking around the reception desk and taking her place beside him.

“Do you want a hairbrush?” he asked, without looking at her. His long fingers were poking at the keyboard lazily.

Meg raked her hand through her hair and offered him an exhausted smile; she suddenly felt that she didn’t have it in her to try and deceive him. Let him tell Paula, let him… whatever. It no longer mattered – and if she was honest with herself, she didn’t dislike him all that much.

“I did forget to brush my hair, didn’t I.”

“So it would appear.”

“But you are,” Meg cast a dubious glance at him, “pretty much bald?”

Martin produced a small pink hairbrush from his pocket in a deliberately casual gesture.

“And yet.”

“Well.” She paused before taking it. “ _What_ do you use it for, then?”

“I brush my cactus,” said he, with a perfectly straight face.

“Is it some kind of weird euphemism?”

“No.” He looked her in the eye, a corner of his mouth curling up ever so slightly. “An actual cactus. My _Rebutia muscula_ happens to reside in a particularly dusty corner, and it needs to be cleaned regularly. So I bought it a hairbrush.”

“A hairbrush.” Meg took it and started hastily parting her hair; the first patients, a small old lady and a guy who looked like he could be her son, were already walking towards the reception desk. “For a cactus.”

“Yes.”

 After that, it was a long and tiring day. For once in her life, she felt like there were too many coffee breaks.

“I ditched Matt,” she told Martin during one of them. He widened his eyes with an _ow!_ of such genuine amazement that she felt a little better.

“ _You_ ditched _him_?” he cried. And, when she winced: “Oh, right! Sorry. Tactless.”

“Saw him kissing another girl.”

Meg had no idea why she’d said she’d “ditched” Matt when in reality nothing of the sort had yet happened, but she supposed Martin didn’t need to know the details. Though he might not have been a bad guy, trying to stop him gossiping about her would be about as easy as… what was that simile Iain had used?.. – to stop a salad spinner?

“Why are you laughing?” asked Martin, perplexed.

“Never mind. You can have your cactus brush back, by the way.”

The whole thing was not nearly as bad as she’d feared it would be. The only downside was that Martin had become intolerably fussy and insisted on bringing her so many glasses of water that she started to think he was expecting her to faint.

Meg even thought, tentatively, that she was sorry to leave him behind when the day was over. He struck her as a little creepy, true, but bantering with him had been a comfort; now she had to go and do… something: deal with her _situation_ , whatever that might imply.

 

She found Iain leaning on his car, waiting. Waiting for her, she realized – it was nice of him, and, to her irritation, she felt her lower lip quiver all over again. _I’m such an intolerable sap,_ she thought helplessly.

 _Thank God she came_ , Iain could only think; although he had no idea what else he’d been expecting to happen. Nor why he’d thought it important that she come.

Meg didn’t get in the car. The wind was blowing her hair about, and she kept brushing it away only for another blast to render her efforts null.

“Iain,” she said, “listen. I just… I wanted to thank you, I guess?”

There was a pause, and she ran her hand over her face in a gesture that made his heart ache.

“I feel like I need a break,” continued she, quieter. “They agreed to give me a short leave, and I don’t have to pay rent anymore, I suppose, so I do have some five hundred quid spare. I’ll… go somewhere. Maybe I’ll even move to a different place.”

Iain swallowed hard.

“You _can_ stay at my place, you know,” he blurted. “I’ve sent Kate’s things to her flat today, she asked me to.”

“Now you’re just being too nice.”

“No, no I’m not! I’m not being nice at all.” He stopped short, flustered. “No, what I mean is, thank you. It’s nice that you think that I’m,” and, after an agonizing moment in which he’d failed to come up with an appropriate synonym, “that I’m _nice_.”

Meg smiled a little and shifted her weight.

“I mean it,” Iain told her. “It wouldn’t be at all inconvenient or unpleasant to me if you stayed. In fact, it would be,” another pause, “nice.”

He cringed inwardly.

“I overused it, didn’t I,” he whispered.

“I would actually like to stay, if you really don’t mind,” she said, without answering, and her shoulders slumped. He opened the front door, and for a moment she lingered, as if asking his permission; when he gave her the broadest smile he could muster, she fairly fell onto the passenger seat.

“Let’s go, then,” she murmured. The car sighed softly and started down the road, the red light of dawn shining from under the windscreen tint strip. Meg closed her eyes and turned away.

“Is it that bad with Kate?” asked she after a while.

“I don’t think she’ll come back,” said Iain simply. His face was creased in quiet sadness.

“Sorry,” whispered Meg.

“What about..?”

“His phone is switched off. Remember, he thinks you and I are an item now. I don’t think he’ll answer, either.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You wouldn’t happen to have any cactuses? Or what was that plural – _cacti_?”

“That’s right,” said Iain’s voice from the bedroom. “The plural of any Latin word ending in –us should have the –i ending. But to answer your question, no, I have no- wait, what?”

“Never mind. Just a thought. It probably means that you don’t have a hairbrush, either.”

Now that she was calm enough to take a proper look around, she found she rather liked the changes made to Iain’s house since she’d last seen it in daylight. Maybe it was due to the fact that Kate’s things were no longer there, but the place looked bigger, emptier, lighter. Really minimalist, in a way. There were a couple of colourful vases beside the couch, containing something gracefully dry that had probably been either flowers or some seriously fancy strings of sour cabbage once.

Even the windows seemed bigger. In the morning, the drawing room would be full of brilliant light.

“I can’t say I see the logic,” Iain said carefully, emerging from the bedroom and closing the door behind him. “But it’s true that I don’t have a hairbrush – only a comb.”

Meg pulled a sour face and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t think a comb is going to do anything for my hair,” she sighed. “It would be like trying to cock hay with a fork.”

Suppressing a yawn, Iain walked up to her and sat beside her on the couch, his hands between his knees; the leather creaked comfortably.

“If you were thinking about brushing your hair with a cactus,” he said, “I must say it is a bad idea. Zero out of ten, do not recommend.”

Meg laughed, as he’d hoped she would, and threw her head back.

“I don’t want to know,” she said.

“But I can help you brush it with a comb. It’ll be easier this way – and besides, I have experience.”

“Would be nice,” Meg drawled. “Experience?”

“I was helping a whole class of children to get rid of lice once,” explained Iain helpfully.

“Oh. Of course.”

“Anyway,” said he, upon some rummaging in the breast pockets of his wildly purple shirt. “Would you mind turning your back to me?”

The instance she complied, Meg felt him touch her hair; then a gentle tugging at her scalp, a little tickly, but undeniably pleasant. It was all relaxing in an inexplicable way: that darkness, Iain’s fingers untangling her locks. The glass of orange juice she’d left on the bedside table in the morning was still there, and she drank from it. Even that sweet and sour taste, it seemed, was one of the things that were making her all drowsy.

“I _was_ a jerk to Matt, you know,” she told Iain, her voice hoarse with sleepiness. “When I… cheated on him with you.”

“Are we having a heart-to-heart?” Iain enquired at length.

“I don’t think we can help it,” shrugged Meg. “People always start talking about these things when they’re brushing another’s hair. It’s like, you know, you always get really emotional when there are only the two of you in the car and you’re driving on an empty road at night. Same thing.”

“That’s weirdly specific,” remarked he, and was silent for a while.

“But I didn’t mean to do it,” she continued thoughtfully. “Ah! That hurt!”

“Sorry,” blurted Iain, who suddenly didn’t trust himself to keep his hands steady. In fact, if he was perfectly honest, he kind of felt like stabbing himself with that comb, which couldn’t have been a good sign.

“I didn’t mean to lie to Matt,” Meg said. “I wanted to leave him and be with you.”

He had no idea why he was reacting the way he was. It was pretty stupid, really – Meg’s words changed nothing, and wasn’t he supposed to be sad about Kate? Even more confusingly, he _was_ sad about Kate, which in no way prevented him from feeling like he’d need CPR in a couple of minutes.

“Really?” choked he.

“Well.” A pause. “Yes.”

“Then why? Why did you..?”

Another pause.

“I got really scared. Matt and I, we’d been together for years- we finished each other’s sentences, we had the same likes and dislikes. In comparison to that, you seemed like a total stranger. You know, two cubes of sugar instead of one, _Titanic_ rather than _Inglorious Basterds_ , that sort of thing.” Meg gave an apologetic shrug. “I was also afraid you’d be creepy about it.”

“ _Creepy_?” cried Iain, obviously hurt. He forgot all about the comb in his hands, leaving half of Meg’s hair unattended to. “Well, in what way?”

“Dunno,” answered she quietly. “I guess it was partly because of the money issue. You earn so much more than I do, and you’ve always insisted on providing me with everything I wanted – I feared you’d be one of these super nice obsessive boyfriends who don’t know when to stop. You do remember _why_ we broke up, don’t you?”

“That time when my mother walked in on us,” Iain said, in a miserable voice.

“Exactly.”

Silence reigned.

“She reported me to the police because I supposedly sold heavy drugs,” Meg reminded gently.

“When we were playing with rubber duckies in an inflatable pool full of gooseberry jam.”

“Yes, that. And it _was_ a coincidence.”

Iain picked the comb up and started going through the remaining half of Meg’s hairdo.

“She did have these stalkery tendencies, poor old thing,” he said.

“So she did.”

“But she won’t do anything like this anymore,” he added very slowly.

Meg turned to him at once, her face a picture of misery.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it this way at all. Iain, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look angry, just infinitely sad, and it pulled right at her heartstrings. Lowering her head to look him in the eye, she moved a little closer and paused, hesitating.

“Hugs?” she whispered.

Iain nodded a little and fairly dropped his forehead against her collarbone. Meg put her arms around him – she could just about lock her hands on his back.

“I thought,” she said, and stroked his shoulder blades, “let’s go somewhere together. I already took that leave, anyway, and you have the time you were planning to spend on your wedding. We do need a break, both of us.”

“You aren’t afraid I’m going to be _creepy_?” asked Iain in a muffled voice with a tiniest hint of resentment.

“No,” she said at once, “no, I don’t think that anymore. I mean, we may have our differences, but we understand each other when it matters.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I suppose.” 

“About that vacation thing – I was thinking Oxford?”

“Sounds nice,” agreed Iain, “they have this nice Gothic architecture and good cocoa. Tolkien’s buried there, too.”

“Not that I’m overly fond of cemeteries,” she responded with a slight grimace, and then smiled. “But cocoa isn’t a bad idea.”

 

It turned out to be frightfully easy – to leave the city where they had lived and worked for years. The very next day they had had collected Meg’s things from the flat she and Matt used to rent (even though Andrew appeared to be under all sorts of wrong impressions and was hence entirely unhelpful) and started down the A34, a hilly road meandering between small towns and ancient forests.

There was an early breakfast consisting of a couple of hot dogs eaten at an exceptionally quiet petrol station somewhere near Banbury. 

Meg wasn’t entirely sure why she’d suggested Oxford and what it was that she was going to do there. Sure, she liked cocoa, and she _did_ need to get over Matt, but – besides that? Maybe they could visit these ridiculous local museums big cities always seem to have. The National Mashed Potato Museum, The Batman Lookalike Portrait Gallery – things like this.

“The Batman Lookalike Portrait Gallery,” she murmured. Iain blinked and shot her a glance.

“I’m sorry?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

She did have an idea. But it was a bad one, and she wasn’t going to act on it. _Of course_ she wasn’t.

There was not a hint of suspicion on Iain’s face. It was his turn to drive, and he manoeuvred the car smoothly, his hands steady on the wheel. Sometimes Meg could see him cast a brief look at the endless elm groves outside; then he’d slowly shift his gaze to her and remain like this for a couple of moments, as if expecting something to happen.

She imagined herself saying the one thing she couldn’t stop thinking. She imagined him giving a surprised yell and driving straight into a tree.

“Iain? Would you mind pulling over?”

When they stopped and were safely far away from any big, solid objects the car could be ran into, Meg turned to him and held her breath. The fact that he clearly had no clue as to what she was going to say made her feel a little desperate.

“I don’t think there’s a good moment to say this,” she said, and closed her eyes, “but, um, I’m not actually _really_ over you.”

She half-expected to hear something loud – a sound effect, perhaps, the _thud_ of a collision, a couple of orchestra chords – but instead it was just a small tremulous sigh. It was as if she’d inadvertently caused him pain. When Meg opened her eyes, she found Iain staring at her; he was very pale and looked positively shaken.

“See,” she offered an awkward laugh, “I knew this would happen! I did well to ask you to pull over, didn’t I? It would’ve been stupid if you drove into something because of me. Fire, blood, ambulances all over the place _. Nee naw, nee naw_!”

Iain leant towards her and for a moment she felt his shuddering breath on her jaw. He wasn’t quite kissing her – rather, it looked as if he were seeking comfort; much like that time they’d hugged yesterday, only now there was a painful uncertainty in all of him, and from the way his sandy hair was tickling her lips she guessed him tremble.

“Meg?” he whispered in a small voice. “May I?”

“Yeah,” said she, and for a moment they were kissing, lips on lips, eyes tightly closed.

Then they pulled apart. She felt like a mess.

“Kate was right,” Iain breathed. His heart was beating somewhere in his throat. “I’m not over you, either. I did everything I could, I almost married-“

“That’s all right,” said Meg, and put her hand on his. They kissed again.

Iain was looking at her, panting, wild-eyed.

“What about Matt?”

“He’s a good guy,” she said simply. “I felt very comfortable. As long as there was nothing really important going on.”

“A habit,” said Iain, in a sort of disoriented haze. He clearly wasn’t talkin just about Matt.

Meg nodded.

“Habits change.”

Iain turned the key in the ignition in a slow and deliberate gesture of someone who doesn’t quite know what they’re doing. Wet sand rustled under the tyres.

“I am driving in the right direction, aren’t I,” he said.

“I think it might be my turn,” Meg responded warningly; there were some moments of awkward fumbling as they changed their seats, and Meg used that opportunity to kiss Iain’s ear.

“You have really big ears,” she remarked, and swung the wheel to the right. They were driving downhill, speeding along a deep murky valley. “They’re funny.”

“Meg? Don’t you think we’re being a trifle _hasty_?”

“No, the speed limit is sixty miles per hour, I’m only making forty- oh. You aren’t talking about the car.”

“No.”

They passed the top of a small hill with a soft _whoosh_.

“Well, we didn’t actually _do_ anything yet,” she said quietly. Her voice quivered a little. “But I do love you. I’ve never not loved you. Not the way it was with Matt. The _other_ way.”

Iain looked like his heart might burst, and she smiled at him.

“Oxford and cocoa is not a half bad start. We can just – you know? Try and see what happens. Iain?”

“Yes,” he whispered happily. “Let’s try. Good enough for me.”


End file.
